Though Levinsohn tempered his remarks by indicating that he thinks there exists space for more than one social network (he even admitted to having a Facebook profile, saying, "Facebook I use more to communicate with people at work... Frankly I find MySpace substantially more entertaining."), it appears as though MySpace may be after the business social networking crowd -- in spite of Levinsohn's comments about using Facebook more at work.

By allowing users to segment their profiles -- especially if they could be controlled from a single access point -- MySpace would take a step toward becoming a viable platform for more serious networking. Further, college-aged MySpace users would likely be happy to be able to share their lives with their families without having to share the party photos they want only their friends to see.

Of course, what makes any social network tick is users, and I'm skeptical that anyone would ever use MySpace for serious business networking (anyone other than a musical act, that is). As Bernard Lunn said last month, LinkedIn is already looking "like a winner." It's hard for me to believe that the frenetic, media-oriented experience of MySpace would ever translate well for business networking. If competition for LinkedIn, Xing, Plaxo, etc. is going to materialize from the mainstream social networks, I think Facebook is probably the best candidate given their cleaner, more professional look (application clutter notwithstanding).

That said, there is certainly the possibility that my speculation is off and that MySpace is not looking to move in that direction, and is making these changes purely for their current audience to be able to keep party photos away from mom. Or, that News Corporation really is interested in buying LinkedIn as a backdoor way into the business networking space and this development is unrelated to that space. Another interpretation is that MySpace is trying to capitalize on Facebook's recent privacy woes by giving their users at least the illusion of more control over who sees their profiles.

Some of the feedback on Bernard's post suggested that it's Facebook which will take advantage of business networking opportunities, moreso than LinkedIn. So at the beginning of this week, we ran a poll asking: In 6 months time, will you have more business contacts in Facebook than LinkedIn? The poll is still running (see bottom of this page), but the current results are in favor of LinkedIn:

Yes, Facebook will have more 27% (102 votes)
No, LinkedIn will still have more 66% (245 votes)
They will be even 6% (24 votes)

As Bernard noted in his post this week, Deconstructing the Business Social Network, to compete on its own LinkedIn probably needs to move away from being a destination site and open up its data via API. There is just too much competition out there from start pages, email services and social networks.

However if they did get acquired by News Corp, that would give LinkedIn a foundation to hold onto its goal of being the destination site of choice for business networking. It's hard to see MySpace being leveraged by LinkedIn, as their audiences are so different. But as Techcrunch UK pointed out, News Corp has a number of newspapers that professionals read - including The Wall Street Journal and (in the UK) The Times and The Sunday Times - so LinkedIn could definitely leverage those.

An acquisition of LinkedIn by News Corp would make sense for both parties. And as LinkedIn is a part of OpenSocial (as is MySpace), that would put even more pressure on Facebook to join OpenSocial. So it'd be a win for Google too, if Rupert buys LinkedIn. What do you think? And if you haven't already, please take part in our poll below:

One of the main reasons people are reluctant to use Facebook for business networking is because Facebook, like other casual social networks, was originally used to share private information with friends. Most people want to do business networking on a site that is strictly business. Facebook profiles are generally not sanitized enough for that, and no one wants their boss to see photos of them half nude at a party (unless maybe you work for Hugh Hefner).

We had hoped that Facebook would not only let you group friends, but also specify privacy settings based on those groups. I.e., you could put coworkers in a group that could only see your contact and bio information and send you messages, but not see your wall or photos. Then friends could be put into a separate group that could do potentially damaging (to your business reputation) things like see and share photos. Even better, groups could be used to more finely tune privacy settings, such as hiding a specific photo or album from a single group.

As we reported in November, Facebook rival MySpace plans to let its users create more than one profile to express themselves in different ways to different contacts -- for example, friends, family, and business. We speculated that perhaps this is an indication that MySpace is planning a run at the business networking crowd. In that post we wrote that, "If competition for LinkedIn, Xing, Plaxo, etc. is going to materialize from the mainstream social networks, [...] Facebook is probably the best candidate given their cleaner, more professional look (application clutter notwithstanding)."

That sentiment still stands, and today Facebook took a tiny step in that direction, but they need to tie in privacy controls to friend lists if they want to seriously appeal to the business networking crowd.

Today we were emailed about a new GTD app on Facebook called Get Stuff Done. It's a solid group networking and task management tool, and in just a few days has over 200 users -- but prospects for long term success are bleak. Two other project management apps that we wrote about in Facebook last November, Projects and MyOffice, barely register on the platform these days. They have just 1,000 and 3,800 users respectively according to Adomonics.

Clearly, there is a potential for Facebook to be a useful productivity tool -- it is one of the web's best address books, and plays host to some of the richest social data, which could be used for very worthwhile purposes. But it has yet to shed its "fun" image. The top 40 apps on the Facebook platform are all of the "play" variety. And of course, Facebook doesn't want to completely shed its college clothing, it parlayed that core "fun" networking image into a $15 billion valuation.

About 5 months ago Stowe Boyd seemed to predict that in 6 months Facebook would be a viable competitor to LinkedIn. Since that time Facebook has taken some steps that clearly make the site better suited for business networking (granular privacy controls, friend groups, friend suggestions, etc.), but as we approach that half year threshold the "not for work" image remains.

A couple of days ago Nick O'Neill wondered if productivity apps would ever find a place on Facebook. It is hard to answer that question with a flat out no, because the opportunity is just too great. As Facebook's core audience of early college users grow older and enter the work force, if the company can retain their attention, then certainly Facebook could be a worthy platform for business networking. But evidence points to that being doubtful to happen any time soon.

Today on GigaOm, Om Malik reports on some of the new numbers coming in for social networks here in the U.S., specifically new comScore data which shows that the two biggest networks - MySpace and Facebook - are beginning to plateau in their growth.

Additionally, he points to an eMarketer article where they've lowered their 2008 advertising estimates from $1.6 billion to $1.43 billion. By looking at these numbers, Malik concludes that social networking is in for "tough times going forward." But is that really the case?

Social Networking Taking Off?

On the flip side, a completely different, and more positive, report on social networking was also released today. The report is called "The Consumer Internet Barometer" and is produced by The Conference Board, a global business research and membership organization, and TNS, a world leader in market insight and information who surveys 10,000 households across the country and tracks who's doing what on the Internet.

Interestingly, their report doesn't mention a decline or plateau at all. Instead, it concludes that what was once only a niche activity is now a growing trend that has more people joining every day. According to the report, one out of every four people visit social networking sites, and half of those that do, do so on a daily basis. The trend is so prevalent, says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, that it's going to extend beyond just personal use. "The next growth wave will be expanding and incorporating these networks into our business lives," she claims.

While this report doesn't look at traffic stats and advertising projections, it is looking at market penetration, and in doing so, paints a much rosier picture than the worrisome plateau in the chart above.

What It All Means

Perhaps social networking is reaching a saturation point as it matures, but that's not to say that it's all doom-and-gloom. Many people are still joining social networks, and, with each new generation, social networking will become even more of a part of life than it was for the generation prior. Whether MySpace and Facebook will always be the hot properties that they are today is yet to be seen, but the rise of new sites like Twitter, for example, shows that there's still potential for new social networks to rise up and gain mainstream appeal.

If anything, the sheer number of users on these networks today prove that social networking has earned its place in today's mix of new media. Don Ryan, Vice President, Technology and Media, TNS, agrees, saying, "as social networking becomes a staple in people's media experience, brands will place it alongside print, TV and search as a main advertising vehicle." Hmmm..maybe a saturation point isn't really such a bad thing after all?

The Debate

On the pro side, Greg Fish argued that social networking profiles aren't resumes and companies should not use them when determining if an applicant should be hired. "A public profile is a vehicle for casually interacting with others in an informal setting, on personal free time," he wrote. "When companies use these profiles to find not only a professional but also an ideological match for a job, they’re misleading themselves and building ill will with talented prospective employees, who might decline to apply for a job for fear a comment about China on their blogs makes them persona non grata."

Fish's arguement hinged on the premise that by utilizing social networking profiles in the hiring process, employees were opening themselves up to potential discrimination lawsuits, and worse may be doing so on the premise of false information.

On the con side, Timothy Lee said that there were plenty of legitimate reasons for employers to look at social networking profiles of prospective hires. "Employees in sales, public relations, and customer service function as representatives for the companies they work for, so employers have a legitimate interest in ensuring potential workers won’t embarrass the company," he wrote.

According to Lee, people shouldn't fear that an employer will get a hold of their social networking profile, but instead they should expect it and use it to their advantage. By using your social networking profile and other bits of your online persona as an "extended resume," workers can "demonstrate passion and depth of knowledge for his or her area of expertise."

But Do We Actually Control Our Own Profiles?

Both Fish and Lee make compelling points. Certainly social networking profiles and other stuff you put online is public, and you should expect that anyone might see it. Carefully crafting your public online image to emphasize your best qualities is a good idea -- treat how you behave online the same as how you'd behave in any other public place.

But at the same time, the way many social networking sites are set up, we don't necessarily control all the information we put out there. It's true that you probably shouldn't be posting party photos from your college days on Facebook while you're applying for a job as an elementary school teacher, but do you friends know that? What if they tag you in those photos? You can remove the tags -- but only if you're a member of Facebook. Is it reasonable to expect people to actively maintain profiles on every popular social network or photo and video sharing site just to keep on top of photos that your college buddies might post?

The bottom line is that employers can, will, and probably should look at social networking profiles and other online information sources when making hiring decisions. But they should also take the information they find there with a large helping of salt and keep in mind that the Internet is not necessarily the most accurate representation of that real world.

"Lotus Connections has five components — activities, communities, dogear (a bookmarking system), profiles and blogs — aimed at helping experts within a company connect and build new relationships based on their individual needs."

The NY Times article notes that IBM has long been interested in social networking, for example it has "several projects under way within Second Life".

Marc Canter thinks IBM's entrance into social networking software validates his own product, PeopleAggregator. IBM's corporate competitor, Microsoft, is a bit more defensive. The Redmond company has issued a press release, with the title 'Microsoft Makes It Easier for Organizations to Transition to Its Unified Communications and Collaboration Platform'. The press release goes on to helpfully (and wordily) suggest how existing IBM customers might migrate over to Microsoft:

"Today, Microsoft announced new tools that will help IBM Lotus Notes/Domino customers take advantage of the new unified communication and collaboration innovations that are being delivered as part of the recently released Microsoft^® Exchange Server 2007, the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Microsoft Office SharePoint^® Server 2007 technologies. These resources include a new suite of tools for managing transitions of IBM’s directory, messaging and application solutions, as well as new templates for SharePoint Products and Technologies, which make it even easier for IT professionals to roll out customized applications for common business scenarios. Together these tools are making it easier for IBM customers to manage transitions to and start experiencing the benefits of Microsoft’s modern, integrated platform, which increases organizational productivity, streamlines business processes, and reduces IT cost and complexity."

That's very kind of Microsoft to assist customers to move off IBM's products and onto its own.

This news probably means little to existing social networks, like MySpace, Facebook and even business-focused LinkedIn. Enterprise social networking, as Microsoft hinted at in its non-too-subtle press release, is more about collaboration and communication. So if anything, this has more to do with Web Office (and in particular Knowledge Management) than social networking.

Via Steve O'Hear

Young gives three reasons he things deployment of web 2.0 will sneak onto enterprise agendas in 2008:

1. IT guys are already using web 2.0 - According to Young, many IT departments and shops have been using web 2.0 tools for internal tasks like project management and support ticketing. The utility of these deployments will encourage them to push web 2.0 tools out more broadly in the enterprise.
2. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em - When big business is unable to stem the use of Software as a Service tools and things like social networks by employees, rather than allow untested software and services on their networks, they will "mitigate risk by deploying enterprise-class tools in their stead."
3. They make you look cool - "For IT departments aspiring to be more relevant to the business," writes Young, "enterprise web 2.0 tools will be a high-impact, low-cost method to show leadership and innovation."

RSS Will Lead the Way

Forrester predicts that RSS will be the most popularly deployed web 2.0 tool in the enterprise over the coming year. "Forrester expects 2008 to be a banner year for RSS and specifically enterprise RSS," says Young, concluding that many of the companies that discovered utility in blogs and wikis last year will realize that RSS is necessary to push that content to users. "While 9% of enterprise firms expect to consider the use of RSS in 2008, we believe that number will be close to 20% by year-end."

But while RSS might be the most important driver of enterprise web 2.0 adoption in 2008, Forrester expects social networking to still be the buzz word du jour. "Expect the adoption of social networking solutions for business to accelerate dramatically in 2008 with many firms looking for internal social networking solutions," predicts the research firm.

While Forrester expects the big boys -- IBM, Jive, etc. -- to rule the roost, they note that "nearly any vendor that uses the term 'social networking' will get at least some consideration." Though, Forrester also expects Microsoft SharePoint to "steamroll" the market, and will reap the most rewards from a shift toward web 2.0 thinking in the enterprise market.

Though the report puts a lot of stock in RSS and social networking, according to their enterprise survey, the technologies that more enterprises are actually planning to invest in over the next 12 months are discussion boards and wikis. Forrester, though, expects that it is these technologies that will drive the further adoption of RSS.

What do you think? Is the enterprise ready for web 2.0? Has web 2.0 already arrived in the enterprise? Lets us know in the comments below.

1. The US consumer economy will slow (maybe into Recession). Specifically this will weaken business models based on consumer advertising. Advertisers, entrepeneurs and investors will switch their attention to B2B.

2. Consumer-focussed Web 2.0 start-ups are in a “digestion phase“. We don’t really need more innovation. We want innovation, its fun and interesting, but what we need is monetization of existing innovation. Entrepreneurs will turn to the quicker monetization options within B2B.

3. Advertisers (and the media that serve them) will seek increasing diversification from 'faith based advertising' (aka CPM); and business markets will offer better options for subscription and transactional models. There is room for 'quick payback innovation' in this area.

Now for the six specific predictions about Business Networking:

2. LinkedIn will either do an IPO or will be acquired. The reason: a globalization roll-up requires a public currency. If they don’t do an IPO, then LinkedIn will be acquired by a company like Newscorp that has a public currency and can make this happen.

3. Facebook will stay consumer NetGen focussed and will not be a major player in Business Networking. This is controversial and already the subject of a specific prediction (see our recent poll).

4. Business Networking models and services will evolve and there will be a lot of room for innovation. Reducing the cost of B2B business development is a really, really big deal. Today’s services are only scratching the surface of the potential. Niche feature-specific start-ups will be acquired by the big networks.

5. Some of the smarter traditional B2B Media firms will wake up to the fact that Business Networking can be their core proposition online and that they can leverage their niche audiences. They will need to do this before the big networks cross over into their niches.

6. Plaxo and LinkedIn will merge. This will be enabled by a common VC owner (Sequoia) and will be driven by the need to bulk-up pre the IPO that is needed to win the globalization land grab.

Now for the “dark horse” - Xing. They are the LinkedIn of Germany. My random one person survey of my nephew who lives in Germany found that he is a committed user who gets real value. They are a dark horse because they are already publicly traded. Their stock only trades in Germany and you cannot find their information on Yahoo Finance or Google Finance, so they are effectively invisible to US investors. However it is a relatively simple for them to get listed on NASDAQ as well. If they do that before LinkedIn does, a Xing IPO could get interesting!

Of course, it is important to remember that Sophos is a security firm and has an interest in stressing these security risks.Though, the sentiment among system administrators is that this somewhat unscientific poll seems to be on par with what we have seen from similar reports.

Malware, Data Leakage, Lost Productivity

According to Sophos, around 40% to 50% of all businesses don't control access to Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, while a slightly larger group of enterprises allow their users to use the more business-oriented LinkedIn. Those who control access cite lost productivity as the main reason more clamping down on social network usage at work, while about 12% to 17% cite a fear of malware and data leakage.

Interestingly, about 7% of respondents had no idea why they were controlling access to these sites. Similarly, around a quarter of all respondents couldn't say if they or their colleagues had ever been spammed on a social networking site, or if they had been the victim of a malware or phishing attack.

Even though businesses are afraid of social networks, Sophos advises against totally blocking off access as users will inevitably find ways around these blocks which will just create new security issues.

We would agree with this, but we would also point out that a lot of these scams and malware attacks still arrive by email. There are a number of legitimate business uses for social networks, as long as they don't include wiring large amounts of your company's money to a poor widow in Nigeria who needs help with a large wire transfer.

From the Consumer Perspective

Probably the biggest concern from a consumer perspective about using general social networks for business networking had to do with privacy. When you start adding colleagues or other business contacts, you have to be more careful about what you expose on your profile. But with the addition of new privacy controls last week, Facebook users now have more granular control over who sees what on the site.

Profile information and other shared items -- such as photos -- can now be restricted to user-created groups of friends, to specific people, networks, or "friends-of-friends." Users even have the option of barring specific content from specific users. Though we also noted that they are so inclusive they could potentially be overwhelming for some users, they are also a necessary step in making users feel comfortable using Facebook for professional networking.

Facebook is slowly positioning itself to be a place where both casual and business networking can take place at the same time, which means that rather than maintaining two accounts -- one at Facebook and one at LinkedIn or Xing -- users could stay at Facebook and use the tools they grew accustomed to in college.

From the Business Perspective

The concerns from the business side are a little more complicated for Facebook to deal with. First, there's the issue of security. The photo lapse we reported on earlier this week may seem inconsequential for most business uses, and was apparently fixed once it was discovered, but security issues like that don't make businesses happy about storing data on a site. Another, potentially more serious (from a business use scenario) security issue that was reported recently is a phishing technique that allows users to record some information from private Facebook groups. Though the info it is able to gather was mostly benign, it still highlights the concern that business users might have about Facebook security.

It is important to note that the above concern assumes a business use case for Facebook that is slightly different than the networking going on at LinkedIn. In the above scenario, businesses would actually be utilizing the network at Facebook internally, rather than professionals merely using the site to network on their own time.

However, the larger hurdle to getting businesses and professionals to adopt Facebook as a networking platform is about attention. Unlike LinkedIn or Xing or Plaxo, Facebook is not all about business. First and foremost, Facebook has been about connecting with your friends and having fun, and that will worry business users. Facebook might have potential as a great business networking platform, but it's also a guaranteed timesink.

The Infrastructure

Facebook, of course, already has a huge number of business users, they're just not using Facebook for business. The business networks on Facebook are already enormous. Microsoft's network has 30,000 users, Google has 8,500, Well Fargo has 4,200, The US Army has 74,000, and the list goes on. Even MySpace has 407 users in its Facebook network.

The trick is to get those users to start looking at Facebook as a place for work as well as a place for play, and the way to do that may be to leverage something that LinkedIn doesn't really have: a platform full of eager developer. (Yes, LinkedIn did launch its platform last December, and it does have OpenSocial involvement, but as we've pointed out, so far it has been quite closed and the results have been less than stellar.)

What Facebook should do, is appeal to the companies that these networks -- which have grown organically as employees voluntarily joined Facebook and declared allegiance to this network or that one -- to utilize Facebook for a closed corporate networking environment. Facebook should encourage platform developers to create tools aimed at enriching company networks (or create them in house if need be), and encourage companies to leverage their existing Facebook network as a corporate intranet by installing applications on it.

That's no small task, certainly, but it is plausible. It's not the same route that LinkedIn has taken -- where company networks have grown organically in much the same way that they have on Facebook. But the end result is the same: making people comfortable enough with the network to do business on it.

Conclusion

Facebook has a history of attacking their competitors at their strongest points. MySpace had a strong widget ecosystem, so Facebook launched their application platform which forced MySpace to scramble to do that same. MySpace has strong ties to music and film, so Facebook has recently tried to forge their own (too early to tell if it is working). LinkedIn has a strong stake in business networking, and Facebook has recently been making moves to suggest that they could be laying the groundwork to go after LinkedIn's audience they way they've gone after MySpace's.

What do you think? Could Facebook ever be a place where serious business is done? Or does it pay to maintain two separate network profiles -- one for work and one for play? Let us know in the comments.

Update: According to Webware, Facebook quietly launched a "People You May Know" feature that is basically identical to a popular LinkedIn feature of the same name. Hmmm...

Along with Greenspan, LiveUniverse has original MySpace engineer Toan Nguyen on its management team. That's some serious chops in the area of social networking, which is where Pageflakes has been heading since the "Blizzard" update last July. We speculated then that Pageflakes was aiming to take on social networks by adding interaction features and networking among users, which is an idea that we initially advanced in a piece we published last May.

"Both Netvibes and Pageflakes already act as platforms, with sophisticated developers APIs for creating widgets and programs to interact with their users," we wrote in May of the two leading AJAX start page companies. "Both companies allow users to customize their pages, and inject personality into them. Both companies also already encourage users to share their creations (Universes and Pagecasts). Perhaps, the next step beyond sharing should be interaction."

Pageflakes started to do that last summer, but perhaps bringing Greenspan and Nguyen into the mix will push Pageflakes further into social networking territory. The first tie-in between the two companies, according to a press release, will be to use Pageflakes' page customization technologies to enhance the social networking aspects of the LiveVideo site.

We're hoping that the two cook up a lot more than that. A quote from Pageflakes CEO Dan Cohen in the press release about the acquisition seemed to hint at bigger things on the horizon: "The combination of our two companies is truly much bigger than the sum of its parts, and the resulting innovation will be highly compelling for our users and partners."

The making of an animated film is a look into the changing world of networking and its importance in the making of just about anything these days.

That's the issue Dreamworks faces. Today it was announced the studio has chosen Hewlett-Packard to revamp the networking infrastructure so it can efficiently produce films such as Shrek.

Dreamworks is in the business of making animated films. The studio has to have the ability to make films efficiently. In many respects, the number of films that Dreamworks produces in a year is dependent on how well it can use its network to do the core processing of the animated characters it is producing.

It's a similar comparison to what we see with the real-time Web. The Internet is at the center of a dynamic supply chain that requires real-time information to be delivered to the right people in the supply chain as events occur.

The challenges are similar in a studio where the network is at the center of the film production process.

The evidence is in the credits of any animated film. The number of specialists required to make an animated film represents the bulk of the people employed to produce it. The network is critical for these people to do their work. It's at the center of the film production process.

The Dreamworks story is a window into the new networking reality. The studios face challenges with producing high-quality films quickly and efficiently. For mot enterprises the challenges are different. They are not processing animated characters. Instead the increasing challenge is the structured and unstructured data that has to be organized, stored and shared.

Networks are at the center of that issue, too. Companies like HP are betting on the premise that the data center network requires a converged infrastructure to manage the complexities of the Web oriented enterprise.

The battle is for the network.

Mobile Web: A Better Platform for Socializing?

What has given rise to this trend? What makes social networking such a popular mobile web activity? It's easy to point to the proliferation of smartphones and their host of applications, 3G network speeds and more affordable data plans, built in web browsers and mobile-ready websites. Of course these are all important factors that have helped increase mobile social networks' popularity. However, these measurements are the reason why mobile web use, in general, is growing, not specifically mobile social networking.

A less quantifiable statistic that may also have impacted the rise of mobile social networking to the point where it has surpassed desktop-based social networking is the fact that it's an activity that taps into how people - normal, everyday people - go about their lives. Readers of a technology site like this may indeed spend hours upon hours behind a computer screen scouring news sites, reading RSS feeds, updating Twitter and chatting on Facebook, but that's not necessarily the norm. A good many of folks out there still spend more time offline than on. For these people, screen time is spent doing business-related activities at the office (with the occasional jaunts over to YouTube and Facebook) followed by briefer after-hours web surfing that includes catching up with friends on Facebook and reading personal email, downloading music and other media, streaming videos and/or playing games. But these online sessions have to be interspersed with other real world activities like cooking dinner, caring for the kids, watching primetime TV, running errands, etc. That's why it's no surprise to find that the rise of the mobile phone corresponds with the rise in Facebook's (and other social networking sites) numbers. It has become a do-anywhere activity that captures people's attention whenever they have free time instead of an activity that requires people make time for it.

Beyond Geekdom: Mobile Brings the Mainstream

In addition (and although I don't have statistics on hand to back this up), the mobile web allows social networks to overcome their more "geeky" stigma of days past. As one friend recently scoffed to me about this particular pastime, "I never saw the point of going home, logging on to the computer and updating my Facebook status. I mean like, who cares what I'm doing? But then I got an iPhone and I could share photos and stuff right then and there. It was cool." OK, not the most eloquent speech, but the point is obvious: mobile social networking isn't just convenient, it's cool.

Here's the bottom line, a trend we've been seeing for some time: the mainstream has arrived. They're buying smartphones and downloading mobile applications. They're surfing the web on the go. They're playing FarmVille on Facebook. They'll probably get an iPad. And for them, mobile social networking is an easy activity to participate in now that it's been unchained from the PC. The broader implications of having the less tech-savvy masses online are only beginning to be explored and understood (as ReadWriteWeb recently saw here when Google users accidentally mistook the blog for the new Facebook). Developers and designers will now have to take this into consideration, too. Either they make their applications accessible and simple enough for least common denominator - or risk losing out to competitors who do.

At Web 2.0 in 2011, 4chan's Chris Poole said that Facebook and Google were doing identity wrong. "Google and Facebook would have you believe that you're a mirror," he said, "but in fact, we're more like diamonds." Of course, it's not very easy to market multiple identities, so why would Facebook even try to do that? Exactly. Poole continued his talk about online identity, stating that Google and Facebook are "consolidating identity and making people seem more simple than they really are."

Unlike Facebook, professional-only social network LinkedIn has a clear purpose and vision: To connect you with other people in your field. It recently updated the CardMunch iPhone app, which scans business cards and connects them with the users' LinkedIn profiles.

The majority of LinkedIn users are in the high tech and finance worlds. Most people on Facebook use it to keep in touch with family and friends, not to network. But unlike LinkedIn, Facebook is what you make of it.

"It's clear that consumer habits of sharing business and personal information are evolving," says MOO CEO and Founder Richard Moross. "The lines between online social networking and offline business networking are not just blurring, but vanishing."

But are they really? And more importantly, will you buy a MOO/Facebook Timeline card?